Online conference: Collectivity and Contexts for Action / On artist-run culture in the Nordic region

Friday 23rd April
10:00-16:30

The conference will take place online as a webinar on Zoom which you can join at this link and will be streamed live on our Facebook page. Please feel free to send questions and comments throughout the day – messaging the chair of the session via Zoom chat is the best way to do this.

With contributions from Alta Art Space, Bananskolen & Goodiepal, Gize, hangmenProjectsKhartoum Contemporary Art CenterManègePodiumSkogenSorbusSydhavn stationTenthausThird SpaceVermilion Sands, Honza Hoeck and Melanie Kitti

Kunsthall Oslo’s current project Death to the Curator is a collaboration with fifteen artist-run organisations from across the Nordic region, and one from Addis Ababa. This online conference brings together participants and organisers from all of these groups to share aspects of their practice, to discuss motivations and methodologies, to map commonalities and differences in their experience and interpretations of artist-run culture. Questions of autonomy, representation, ritual, recuperation, subsistence, aesthetics, democracy… surround the central assertion that these forms of organisation are brought into being – again and again – because they make possible forms of collectivity for which there is otherwise no space in the contemporary cultural scene.

Each session has the same structure: an initial keynote setting out central themes, a series of short individual presentations focusing on each group’s activities and experiences, and then an open discussion with questions from the chair and from the audience.

10:00
Introduction
10:10
First session: Collectivity and Contexts for Action
Are there forms of collectivity or contexts for action that artist-run organisations can create that a traditional institutional practice cannot?
with Honza Hoeck (TOVES), Alta Art Space, Third Space, Vermilion Sands and Tenthaus / chair: Kunsthall Oslo
11:30-12:00
Discussion & questions

12:30
Second Session: New Models and New Situations
Artist-run initiatives in the Nordic region are creating new models as they question what it means to produce value, artistic and otherwise. We discuss how circumstances can shape organisational forms, and how organisations hope to change situations.
with Khartoum Contemporary Art Center, Bananskolen & Goodiepal, Sydhavn Station, hangmenProjects and Skogen / chair: Kunsthall Oslo
14:00-14:30
Discussion & questions

14:45
Third Session: (Re)imagining the future of artist-run culture
Once again the dominance of the ruling-class institutions of art is in question. What new forms will we build in the shell of the old?
with Melanie Kitti, Gize, Podium, Manège and Sorbus / chair: Kunsthall Oslo
16:10-16:40
Discussion & questions

Death to the Curator is supported by Nordic Culture Point, Nordic Culture Fund and Arts Council Norway